Urban and Regional Planning

Housing counseling agencies (HCAs) in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area have served as important resources for homeowners at risk of fore-closure. However, Asian American–serving HCAs have experienced increased segmentation in the nonprofit sector and also among HCAs because of language assistance. Using interviews with foreclosure counselors , this study finds that HCAs that provide Asian-language assistance experience similar challenges as other HCAs, but are also at a disadvantage in resources and capacity compared to other HCAs. The study has implications for how to better serve immigrant homeowners with language needs, particularly because they require more time and resources.

This study demonstrates how multiple methods can inform national survey data collection reports for Indigenous populations using Pacific Islanders as a case study. National data surveys are oftentimes limited in how they collect data on small populations due to data suppression, and they lack nuance in how they aggregate distinct populations. I conduct linear regression models of U.S. Census data to demonstrate that Pacific Islanders lag behind Whites in income, even a er controlling for household characteristics and geography. Further analyses of oral histories and interviews with Pacific Islanders demonstrate that income disparities exist in part because of remittances, competing  financial demands, and citizenship status. I argue that it is important to add survey questions that capture migrant experiences to improve national data survey collection efforts. By utilizing and improving both types of data collection, researchers can better comprehend the barriers and opportunities for decreasing the racial income and wealth gap, which will strengthen the economic stability of Pacific Islanders in the United States.

The United States continues to be defined by racial concentration, where most racial/ethnic groups live apart from each other. For homeownership, neighborhoods with large proportions of racial minorities is oftentimes linked to negative outcomes for minority homeowners, particularly during the Great Recession. However, middle- and upper-income ethnic neighborhoods, or resurgent neighborhoods, have grown in numbers due to a concentration of immigrants, federal policies favoring professionals, ethnic-specific resources, and affluence. In 2007, about 37% of Los Angeles Latino tracts were resurgent and 53% of Asian tracts were resurgent. This study finds that homeowners in resurgent neighborhoods had lower default/foreclosure rates and predicted probabilities than low-income neighborhoods. Asian resurgent neighborhoods had the lowest predicted probabilities of default or foreclosure, followed by Latino resurgent and White middle-class neighborhoods. There were also discrepancies among Asian neighborhoods based on nativity. Consequently, it is important to recognize that minority neighborhoods are heterogeneous, with differing impacts on homeownership opportunities when examined by class.

There is a disagreement amongst scholars about how much income differences play in generating residential segregation. While most social scientists point to individual prejudices and institutional racism, others counter that segregation is a byproduct of systematic economic differences. For example, some minority groups are poorer and are thus disproportionately concentrated in low-income neighborhood. This paper examines 1) the demographic and socio- economic transformation of Los Angeles from 1960 and onward 2) the role of race and ethnicity in the spatial geographic housing patterns, with a specific focus on levels of segregation, and 3) whether racial segregation could be explained by systematic differences in income across racial/ethnic groups. The findings indicate that although black-white segregation has been decreasing steadily, segregation remains high while increasing amongst Hispanics. From comparing these observed dissimilarity indices and census tract majority groups with simulated numbers based on income, this study also finds that income differences alone do not explain residential segregation and that many other factors (including race) come into play.

Ethnic identity helps understand group characteristics and opinions, yet many data do not have information on ethnicity. This study assesses the Prominent Ethnic Surname Methodology (PESM) to identify how representative it is of the ethnic group. We examined whether " Chen, " " Nguyen, " " Kim, " and " Patel " are representative of Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Indians, respectively. We found Kim and Nguyen to be the most well-representative in Los Angeles County because they are unique and prevalent among their group in this geography. PESM is useful for policymakers and survey developers, particularly as efforts to develop the 2020 Census are under threat and may lead to undercounting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.